Pileated Woodpecker - Remember Woody the Woodpecker? Yes, that's it!

Having relocated back to my home state of Washington, to the beautiful Pacific Northwest, the one thing that is not lost is the birder in me - quite the opposite.

I moved into a roommate situation that worked from August to early March then I needed a place of my own - away from the hubbub of an off-Broadway Capitol Hill apartment.

I bid farewell to my murder of Corvid friends and they in turn finally came upon my stoop the very last day as I was moving,.

A lone crow came to eat from my hand.

No, she didn't want the usual fare of peanuts I lain upon the railing, but she was interested in a piece of salami I was eating and scooted closer - tilting her head, a curtsy, then she blinked.

I knew I was suckered and handed it to her. She politely took it and flew off to a nearby pole.

I found a new sense of wonder. I asked myself "I wonder what species I will see first when I get there."

I relocated to a quieter, private apartment in a virtual Bavarian flashback called Firdale Village - a small niche community in southwest Edmonds on the border of Shoreline - a delightful place where the evening breeze blows pleasantly in from the Puget Sound.

Now I find myself more hellbent on identifying species by sound only, trying, in a sense, to organically increase and hone my avian identification skills.

The first species that welcomed me to the little subculture I now find myself a part of was not a sighting, but rather a sound, the pronounced calls of the Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus).

Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes this species as "Nearly as large as a crow, the Pileated Woodpecker is the largest woodpecker in most of North America. Its loud ringing calls and huge, rectangular excavations in dead trees announce its presence in forests across the continent."

From the moment I drove my car into a parking stall at the bottom of my apartment steps, as I opened the car door to start unloading the mass of neatly stacked boxes and clothes, there it was, or should I say "He" was, making those beautiful sounds.

The echoing of a lone male Pileated Woodpecker, possibly calling for its mate or looking for a mate, echoed and billowed out three, four, five times into the canopy of the forest.

As he called out into the tall pines, I smiled. Recalling times I heard a similar sound of a woodpecker hidden in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The disappointment of never seeing it was etched in my mind.

A feeling welled up inside me. A sense of pride that I relocated to the perfect stoop from which I would listen to the progressive (and potential) mating rituals of this bird. And what a gift to be happy just to listen.

And, as I expected "He" did not disappoint from the not-so-far-away tree top I could hear his cries.

Three days I listenend intently to his dawn to dusk calls, when suddenly I heard another call.

Could it be?

As I stood on my balcony, pervaying the spread of forest behind my apartment, I sipped from my morning cup of Tully's Italian Roast coffee.

Again, listening carefully I realized a new group of return calls were coming from close proximity to my stoop. Was it a mate, or another male?

Two, three sips of coffee, then another echoing of calls from a lesser distance.

Call number four came from the southeast. At the top of a Douglas Fir he sat silent awaiting an answer.

The tallest of pines rise above my balcony - as far as the eye can see.

A bellowing of quick return calls to him.

Suddenly a fluttering of activity above me. He flew toward her in the pine tree above.

As organically as the mating calls started, so did the orchestration of early morning drumming.

Happy are they to simply do what birds and bees do.

The couple called and drummed for weeks then silently fledged a brood of little "Woody's" above my balcony.  What a treat!

March, April, now spring is gone - summer is here - with his echoing calls.

I did finally spot the species through my binoculars, and I checked that one off my Life List.